Wishin . . . and hopin . . . and waitin . . .

Now elsewhere and otherwise, people have already covered Michael Gerson's thoroughly retarded cri in today's Post. So I'll only add comment on one minor piece of Gersonian reportage:

When the statistics on teen sexuality are controlled for social and economic factors, conservative Protestant teens first have sex at about the same time as their peers -- the average is midway through their 16th year. That is hardly comforting to conservative Protestant parents, who would expect more bang for the bucks they spend funding Sunday schools -- well, actually, less bang.

But these numbers shift when controlled for religious intensity. For those who attend church often, sexual activity is delayed until nearly 17, while nominal evangelicals begin at 16.2 years, earlier than the national average.

Tops and bottoms, males and shemales, Barbaras and Hedwigs, let us tease this out to its last, angry inch. The barren ground on which we chastely tread is just under ten months from side to side. The average life expectancy of American men and women is right around 76.5 years. Haul out the old abacus, and what do you get? You find that this whole range is almost precisely 1% of an average American life! Big changes, baby. You get the quick-dawning realization that all the threats and harangues of a vast, callous, implacable god and all his earthly interlocutors cannot budge the average age of intercourse by any statistically significant margin.

To put it in language that Mike might understand: Come sophomore year, someone is gonna do your daughter. Does it really matter if it's at homecoming or at the prom?